P Eck-- Yes, I looked at adding two points-- it was the only other way to go you could seriously consider. Problem is that it produced a huge percentage of horses running off races and \"X\"\'s-- the distibution would be completely screwy.
By the way, yesterday I tossed off a seat of the pants estimate that stake 3yos at least paired their tops around 50% of the time. Well, George ran it, and here it is:
3yos, March through June, stakes only, same criteria as the Thoro-Pattern (same surface, all sprints or all routes, all races within 6 weeks of each other)--
New tops 22%, \"pairs\" (within a point either way) 28%, total 50%-- I am the man.
When the study is just colts or geldings, routes only, the breakdown becomes new tops 28%, pairs 33%. Sample size on that one 224.
TGJB -
You may be the man, but you must admit there\'s a certain amount of circularity to your argument. You make the figures assuming that stake 3yos at least pair their tops around 50% of the time and, lo and behold, the figures show that stake 3yos at least pair their tops 50% of the time. (Admittedly, that it comes out exactly 50% is pretty amazing.)
Respectfully,
BitPlayer
So you think I sit there and say, hmmm, there are 8 horses in the race, I\'m going to have to give 4 either pairs or new tops?
I assume nothing about what percentage will run well when I do a day (and contrary to what some people have said I do, most days hold together pretty well, you don\'t break out races all over the place-- both La Derby day and BG day, which I posted sheets for, are examples). You make the figures by using lots of horses of ALL ages. And even if you do a race as a stand alone (only route, weather change, track changing speed), you are restricted by the relationships within the race, defined by beaten lengths, ground, and weight. You can\'t just arbitrarily give horses what you want to give them, and have it come out right.
Yes but YOU are the one who thinks it\'s right. That\'s the circularity thing. Not that there\'s anything wrong with that.
HP
I\'m glad some \"journeymen\" started this thread, because I am still admittedly a ***
10 lb apprentice TG user.
Bellamy Road\'s thoro pattern amazes me. (I know all of the disclaimers concerning patterns and 3YOs at this time of the year.) I know it is based on a tiny (24 start) sample.
Accoding to this limited sample, there is a 25% chance he will reach a new top (breaking Sec\'s Derby record probably) and a 33% chance that he will equal (or worse) his lifetime\'s poorest performance. Fascinating.
Is it counterproductive to publish a pattern based on this small a sample?
HP-- Don\'t start. I\'m talking about it coming out where a significant pecentage of ALL the horses run in a tight range for themselves. You can\'t make that happen unless it happens-- they are independent of each other.
Richie-- the Thoro-Patterns lump together things which have some differences, so you have to make distinctions, which is a point I made in the introduction to them. I don\'t think anybody would say that a horse making a 5 point jump to a neg 5 was a serious candidate to run a new top.
I think BitPlayer was only refering to your quote from above to P-Eck: \"P Eck-- Yes, I looked at adding two points-- it was the only other way to go you could seriously consider. Problem is that it produced a huge percentage of horses running off races and \"X\"\'s-- the distibution would be completely screwy.\"
That does seem to indicate that a \"screwy distribution\" does influence your thinking on the figures to assign.
Of COURSE the question of distribution, in general terms, influences my thinking-- that\'s how everyone does figures, not just me. That\'s what the \"projection\" method is all about, whether it\'s stated consciously or not. But that\'s not the same as tying every race to the average, or to your expectation.
This goes to a statement that Friedman made at the Expo, which I didn\'t react to quickly enough to respond to, and which I addressed here once before. Andy and I were explaining why it was right to make race by race variants,and Len said it was wrong because (paraphrasing) in the long run, all permutations (distributions) are possible, and will happen, so it is right to tie every race to the surrounding races (barring extreme weather). There are two problems with this--
1-- as the presentation in the archives shows, it is wrong to make the assumption that the track is staying the same \"speed\".
2-- Yes, all permutaions are possible, BEFORE THEY RUN THE RACE. Once they run the race the relationships between the horses are fixed by lengths beaten, ground, and weight-- you can\'t change one without changing the rest. This means that realistically there are only two or three things you can consider doing with a race-- P Eckharts alternative theory on the Kee races, for example, was the only other one you could seriously consider, and the incredibly high percentage of \"X\"\'s compared to the very low percentage of new tops doing it that way would bring made it unlikely. Along the way, you do come across lots of permutations-- some days (like that nightmarish Kee 4/23 day) you get a few horses who jump out of their skin, AND a lot who X out. I don\'t just decide to have less horses X out to conform with averages, since that would give the ones who ran out of their minds even crazier numbers than I assigned for that day, which were plenty crazy enough.
Of course, you can avoid all this by just using an average variant for the whole day, like Ragozin does-- sprints, routes, start to finish, just throw them together and look at distribution. That way you only have to make one decision.
Considering that Beyer uses the projection method, any idea what he did with 4/23 at Kee? Would that ever be relevant for you?
If you mean would it affect how I did the day, no. I did look to see what he did with the 25 LENGTH SPRINT WINNER of the first race (maiden), and he did give it one of the best sprint figures of the year (112). He also robbed him. Try dealing with races where the winner runs 18 points (that\'s EIGHTEEN #&*! POINTS) better than anyone else. Secretariat ran 12 points better in the Belmont.
That place is a bitch to do figures for. The day before was hell too-- and that wasn\'t even a sloppy track, although there were very strong winds.
I once did a study on the average margin between horses on fast tracks vs. very off tracks. The difference was quite significant. The average margin was much larger on very sloppy tracks.
I think you are sometimes screwed no matter how you interpret some very sloppy track results.
If you try to give the horses in the middle of the pack figures that make some sense you will sometimes wildly overrate the performance of the winner.
If you give the winner his expected figure you will sometimes underrate the performance of the mid pack horses.
I once played around with a beaten length adjustment factor that reduced the margins between the horses on a very sloppy track by an amount that made them consistent with typical fast tracks. Then I used the new beaten lengths to make the figures.
I found it \"very useful\" as a general tool in an inexact game, but it\'s not scientific enough to be appropriate for TG.
I think the reality is probably that a lot of horses just don\'t like extreme slop and others finish well beaten because of all the mud that\'s kicked up into their faces that they have to carry on their bodies. Of course there are some mud freaks out there too.
IMO, you have to take all figures earned under conditions like that with a grain of salt even if you are fairly confident in the methodology.
Post Edited (04-26-05 22:07)
Sham broke down in the Belmont, right?
The question now becomes, how does that relate to this years derby? 61% of 3yr colts run new tops or pair right about now. Do they run these pairs/tops after 6+ pt moves.
Sham broke down in the Belmont, right?
Correct.
After seeing some of this years BIG JUMP #\'s., he can possibly jump 5 pts to a 0. What\'s the probability of that?
Jerry,
First of all, you have my utmost admiration for even attempting to come up with accurate figures for that day (4/23) at Keeneland. I recall margins of victory on dirt of 25, 12, 7, 10, 6 and so on. What about the 5th race, where the winner won by 7 and the second place horse was 22 lengths clear of third? I agree that many guys who train for the Lexington breeding elite gear up for this meet, juice or no juice. Either way, this is one horseplayer who is counting the hours until that place closes for the summer.
Is there any chance they can run those two Keeneland meets much like the Dubai Racing Carnival? They should not allow betting no matter what you\'re religious affiliation. Just have the breeding industry put up the purse money as sort of a showcase for their horses, and let the juice run wild. I would have no problem forgetting that the place ever existed.
Bull
Although Sham broke down in the Belmont, it was not a mortal injury. I saw Sham on a side trip during my first visit to Keeneland in 1991. Slapped him on his neck and asked him what it was like to run so close to greatness (wasn\'t it a couple of decades before a horse beat Sham\'s time in the Derby?). Anyway, I got no response, he just tried to bite me.
Though the public and press often overate the track bias concept, often KEE really does have a strong bias, though it can change in the wink of an eye and is often incorrectly diagnosed.
For instance, Thunder Gulch\'s Bluegrass fig was a toss out due to the very deep track and very slow pace. He \"bounced back\" nicely at CD and he paid about 25-1 at the Derby, I think.
Tommorrow, in the Ben Ali, Zito\'s horse will test my theory that, on 4/9, the rail was live but Zito\'s horse got hung wide and had no shot. Throw out that fig. Thus, the horse may return to form and win for fun. Remember, you heard it here first. :-)
Also, speed-on-the-rail biases (common for sloppy tracks) can really distort figures both for the advantaged and against disadvantaged. Recall Go for Gin getting hung wide on the first turn at Gulfstream on a speed/rail favoring track. Naturally, GFG\'s race and fig was horrible that day. But, at the Derby, he had it his way and ran back to his prior big numbers.
Remember, how a fig is earned is often just as important as what the fig itself.
DeathBredon-- whose figures are you referring to, do they include ground loss, and what makes you think that a tough trip or bias are the only reasons a horse would run an off race? Some of us did pretty well on that Thunder Gulch Derby-- in fact I know one guy who wrote an article in the DRF saying to box 3 horses, and they ran 1-2-3 ($2k tri).
The problem I have is he gave the horse a figure he thought was relative to his ability, not relative to how fast he ran on that day. I heard he lowered the number from 125 to 112 based on the horse not being able to run a 125, but clearly on that surface the horse freaked and ran a crazy number, it happens.
TGJB wrote:
> If you mean would it affect how I did the day, no. I did look
> to see what he did with the 25 LENGTH SPRINT WINNER of the
> first race (maiden), and he did give it one of the best sprint
> figures of the year (112). He also robbed him. Try dealing with
> races where the winner runs 18 points (that\'s EIGHTEEN #&*!
> POINTS) better than anyone else. Secretariat ran 12 points
> better in the Belmont.
>
> That place is a bitch to do figures for. The day before was
> hell too-- and that wasn\'t even a sloppy track, although there
> were very strong winds.
>
>
TGJB -
It was not my intent to disparage your figures or your figuremaking in my earlier post (now a couple of days ago) in this thread. You have explained your methods well enough that I know you wouldn\'t arbitrarily set the variant for a spring 3yo stake race so that half the horses at least pair their tops.
However, as you have indicated, the projection method of figuremaking requires that you have some preconceived notions about what is likely to have occurred in a race (e.g., they didn\'t all run five point new tops) that allows you to decide whether to break a race out and, when you do, to pick the variant that makes the most sense in light of the fixed beaten-length-and-ground-loss relationships between the horses. As you suggest, the alternative is to be very reticent about giving different variants to individual races absent an obvious change in track condition. I\'m inclined to side with you that your approach is more accurate than the alternative as a means of creating a useful handicapping tool.
I think you have to be careful, however, about using your figures to validate your underlying preconceived notions (such as that spring 3yo stake horses at least pair their tops roughly 50% of the time). Because of your preconceived notion, your figuremaking will tend to push the figures in that direction. I\'d concede that you couldn\'t push a square peg into a round hole (so that 50% is probably not an unreasonable estimate). The extent to which your bias might affect things would depend in large part on how often you break races out and by how much.
Having exhausted my thoughts on that subject, I do have a couple of questions:
Len\'s argument that all permutations are possible raises one of the questions. It\'s fair to guess that somewhere, sometime, there was a spring 3yo stake race in which all of the horses either ran an off race or Xed (I\'m reminded of the movie \"Magnolia\": strange things happen all the time). Do you think your methods would allow you to identify such a race? Or do you think an occasional error in assessing an individual race is a small price to pay for getting most of the races right? Or do you think something else entirely?
My second question relates to the Fountain of Youth. Without having seen subsequent figures for the entire field, it strikes me that a number of horses coming out of that race posted markedly better figures in their next races. Would something like that cause you to revisit your figures for the race?
Respectfully,
BitPlayer
Saddle-- If he knew before the race that horse had the ability to run \"just\" 112, he could have made a lot of money.
Yeah, it\'s funny how things that came up at the Expo keep coming up. Beyer took the position that if 2 horses with a solid history of running 80s come up as 95s, you should bring them to 80s. Friedman said you should give them the 95s, tie it to the rest of the day. Both seemed to forget their were other horses in the race. This is probably a function of using pars, where you go mostly by the winners, and it\'s wrong-- if the race is full of 80s that get 80s, you give the top two 95s, but if giving those two 95s means moving up the rest of the field 15 points as well you don\'t, regardless of the rest of the day.
Bit-- I want to give you an in depth reply to this, and I haven\'t got the time right now. Hopefully later today, definitely soon.
TGJB,
With regard to Thunder Gulch, my memory is that his TG number was good before Kentucky, dissapointing in the BG, and obviously decent in the Derby. That BG put a lot of folks of him, but it really wasn\'t as bad a race as the TG fig (or Beyers) showed because of the way the race evolved and the way the track was playing. (I didn\'t know you had tabbed him [congrats], but I nailed him independant from the TGs and my personal observations at the BG.)
With regard to the Ben Ali and Pies Prospect, Beyer gave PP a bad number in 4/9 race. But again, based on the way KEE was playing that day, I figured him to run back to his Florida form in the Ben Ali (and I think I wasn\'t far off).
Although I didn\'t see the TGs for the Ben Ali, other posts on the board seem to indicate that not many would have backed Farish\'s horse from the figs, especially as the short priced favorite. Neverhtheless, Farish\'s SIX YEAR OLD horse managed to run the TWO BEST races of his life back to back at Keeneland and win handily. Of course, we locals were not all surprised by this seeming minor miracle (we made Alumni Hall the favorite) as Farish horses most always seem to run several points better at KEE than anywhere else. Still, I bet the horse with the highest top hoping for an \"upset.\"
In short, the 4/9 prep and the Ben Ali are examples of why I imagine that KEE must be horrible to make figs for. I know its hard to use them at KEE. (Its also why I wouldn\'t through out Frankel\'s horse in the Derby, especially if Bobby can get him to rate.)
Best wishes,
DB